Melissa began her career while living in an Environmental Justice Community in Newark, a place called a “sacrifice zone” and a “waste-shed” by advocates. It was here that she cut her teeth as a community activist, organizer and advocate by conducting truck counts, neighborhood mapping, air monitoring and giving written and public comments on permits and projects.

More recently, she was a part of the coalition recognized by Governor Murphy for her contribution to the passage of S232 into the nation’s first Cumulative Impacts law. She holds her M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the New School University and was an out-of-school time educator for over twenty years before making the transition into environmental work.

Beto’s lived experience, growing up fenceline to a petrochemical facility turned superfund site, that formulated DDT, agrochemicals and other pesticides, and left behind legacy contamination, continues to drive his work at the intersection of environmental justice and public health. Beto is currently involved in an environmental health research study centered in his childhood neighborhood in Southern California. He is also part of the formation of the California Environmental Justice Coalition, and member of the EJ Leadership Forum and serves in the Advisory Board of the Moving Forward Network. Beto’s contributions to the movement include organizing, policy that prioritizes environmental justice and community led research amongst many other community engaged initiatives including the deployment of a community led air monitoring network that directly influenced state policy. Beto has co-authored multiple academic publications on community based participatory research, air pollution, data accessibility, community engagement and presented his work in multiple NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers. He also serves on the advisory board for the Southern California Center for Children’s Environmental Health Sciences Translational Research (SC-CCEHTR) and the Advisory Board for the Community Engagement Core of the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center at USC (SCEHSC). In August 2021 Beto was invited to serve on the Federal Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, to represent a grassroots frontline perspective. He is committed to finding ways to improve environmental literacy, community expertise and academic expertise through Science and Community Action Network.

mark! engaged in a wide array of student activism at UC Santa Cruz where he earned his B.A. in Environmental Studies, and taught university courses at UC Santa Cruz, Cal State Northridge, and UCLA Extension. mark! earned his M.A. from the Chican@ Studies Department at Cal State Northridge, where he completed his Masters thesis titled “The Fire: Decolonizing “Environmental Justice.”

mark! joined East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice as a member three years before joining the staff. After serving as Lead Organizer for East Yard Communities and Co-Director with EYCEJ Co-Founder Angelo Logan, mark! served as the Executive Director for over 6 years. He is now serving as Eastside Community Organizer & Special Projects Coordinator. He organizes in the area where he was born, raised and continues to live. mark! is the 2017 North American Recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize.